LGBTQ Histories From the WWII Home Front

San Francisco Pride March, 1978.  After WWII, San Francisco and the Bay Area became an epicenter for the evolution of the LGBT rights movements.

Photo by Marie Ueda; Courtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

 

Jiro Onuma (center) with friends, circa 1930’s.  Onuma, a gay man, immigrated to San Francisco from Japan in 1923 and worked in a laundry before WWII.

): Courtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

Changing History

While fighting to gain equal rights, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people (LGBTQ) and their allies have also worked to unearth their histories, and have shed new light on the watershed moment that World War II created. By incorporating LGBTQ history, Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park continues to document and share the many diverse experiences of Americans on the home front.

Historians have shown that understandings of sexual desire, behavior, and expression have varied depending on place and time. It was only in the late 19th century that the medical profession developed firm categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Contemporary notions of what it means to be straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer are relatively recent.

Nineteenth-century California, and especially the Bay Area where San Francisco earned the name “Sodom by the Sea,” was home to people who pushed sexual boundaries, or lived outside of them. Laws and public opinion against individuals with non-conforming gender or sexuality grew more and more harsh in the early 20th century. This caused many people to hide aspects of their identity because they feared arrest, expulsion from their families and churches, loss of jobs and housing, and even physical violence.

Today, LGBTQ Americans are increasingly visible. Their claims to equal civil rights and social respect — whether in the ability to marry, or to work and live without harassment — are being heard, and are reshaping how people think about gender and sexuality.

 

Drag Performers, circa 1930s.  Wearing clothes associated with the “opposite” gender was banned in many U.S. cities during the 1930’s, but was especially popular in San Francisco nightclubs.

Courtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

 

Portrait of Ramona, 1944.  Some young Latina women challenged gender norms by wearing zoot suits, a style first worn by working-class Mexican, African American and Jewish young men.

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

Coming Out West

Hundreds of thousands of defense workers, and over one million servicemen and women, moved to or passed through the Bay Area during WWII. This mass migration loosened home ties and presented new freedoms to individuals who couldn't fully be themselves in the rural areas, towns, and cities they called home.

“I came here just before World War Two started, 1941. And the reason I came was that I didn’t fit in with South Dakota and I knew it from the time I was quite small.” Burt Gerrits

WWII was a particularly liberating period for women and teenage girls, as families changed and as women moved into industrial jobs previously held by men. The sight of women in pants and overalls, clothing previously considered only for men, became common during WWII.

“A friend showed me an ad in the paper stating that Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica was hiring women riveters. I applied, was hired, and there I made more lesbian friends.”Beverly Hickok

The ferry from San Francisco to Richmond reportedly had a specific area where gay and lesbian workers socialized. Jim Kepner, who grew up in Galveston, Texas, described a somewhat more tolerant attitude at the shipyards than he’d experienced before. “Even though there was homophobia, it didn’t have a vicious quality to it.” Not everyone’s experience was the same as Kepner’s, some suffered discrimination and prejudice in the workplace. However, away from family and friends and the social conventions of small-town life for the first time, many young women and men explored new sexual identities and realized that they were not alone. Historian John D’Emilio claims "World War II was something of a nationwide coming-out experience.”

 

Rikki Streicher (left) and Friends at Berkeley’s Claremont Hotel, circa. 1945. Loosening dress codes allowed for scenes like this group of lesbian friends enjoying themselves at the Claremont Hotel, a swank spot in the Berkeley hills.

Courtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

 

Gladys Bentley, circa 1943.  After a successful career performing in Harlem nightclubs before WWII, Gladys Bentley moved to California and became a featured act at Mona’s 440 Club in San Francisco.

Courtesy of JD Doyle, Queer Music Heritage.com .

Gathering Spots in San Francisco

Socializing in private homes was the safest way for LGBTQ individuals to congregate, since showing affection in public could lead to a beating or arrest. But when LGBTQ people needed to find companionship and community, bars played an especially important role as gathering spaces.

“I had been dying to find my kind. To meet my brothers and sisters. Because when I finally got into a bar, it was wonderful having a romance, but what I was looking for was a sense of community.” - Jim Kepner

Cocktail lounges, cafes, bars and nightclubs that catered to LGBTQ crowds flourished during the war. Gay men “cruised” bars in many parts of the Bay Area, including upscale San Francisco hotels like the St. Francis and the Mark Hopkins. Lesbians gathered in places like Mona’s 440 Club where they were entertained by performers such as Beverly Shaw, who drove a cab by day and performed at night dressed in a tuxedo while singing parodies of popular songs.

“We’re just a bunch of fresh faced kids… wearing Levi’s and cowboy boots. She said to us “You kids don’t belong here. You should go to Mona’s 440. You’ll love it, just take my word for it!” - Reba Hudson

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Staff and performers at Mona’s 440 Club, circa 1940’s.  Mona’s, the only lesbian-oriented nightclub in wartime San Francisco, was advertised as a place “where girls will be boys.”

Courtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

 

Jackie Mei Ling, circa 1940.  This portrait was titled, “The World’s Greatest Female Impersonator”, and was used in a 1942 advertisement for the Shangri-la nightclub in San Francisco.  These shows challenged gender boundaries, and attracted straight tourists seeking novelty.

Courtesy of Arthur Dong, filmmaker and author, Forbidden City, USA: Chinatown Nightclubs, 1936-1970.

(Gathering Spots...)
These places offered companionship, but also posed the risk of arrest. Homosexuality was, by definition, illegal, which allowed law enforcement agencies to raid bars that served LGBTQ people. Historian Nan Alamilla Boyd’s important book Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 describes how the state as well as military and local police “brought new strategies, techniques and targets to the suppression of gay and transgender nightspots” during WWII. Nearly one hundred bars and nightclubs made the “off-limits” list, inadvertently creating an underground guide to LGBTQ nightspots. After the war, these gathering places continued to be an important part of LGBTQ communities, and the later LGBTQ civil rights movements.

“It was the beginning of the war, you know, and everybody was frantic, everybody was hurting. They needed happiness, they wanted entertainment; the sons and husbands and lovers were going off to war." - Jackie Mei Ling